Since this thread got revived, I thought you might want an update on this. We ended up camping at a rest area halfway up. After we were done with the climbing we felt fed up with our slow progress, so we rode a century back to Taipei. This is with four panniers each so as you can imagine, we were beat.
Christmas Eve 67km 1707m
Christmas day 106km 2132m
Boxing day 169km 1034m
I don't think I'll do that climb again. Car next time. Or maybe get a ride to the top and coast down. Late on Christmas day it went down to 2C and was raining. A hair lower and the road would have iced up and we'd have been stuck up there.
quite impressive those days.
as someone who commutes all year in montreal, cold is one thing but low temps like 2c and rain are the worst to me. Any single digit celcius and rain pretty much sucks. thats why i always have dish washing gloves that you can fit thin gloves inside, really saves the hands from freezing
Oh, and ya, you dont want ice. You can lose the front faster than you can react and those falls are always going to hurt.
cheers